CKAN is used in many countries, and adding a new language to the web interface is a simple process.

CKAN uses the url to determine which language is used. An example would be /fr/dataset would be shown in french. If CKAN is running under a directory then an example would be /root/fr/dataset. For custom paths check the ckan.root_path config option.

If your language is present, you can switch the default language simply by setting the ckan.locale_default option in your CKAN config file, as described in Internationalisation Settings. For example, to switch to German:

If you want to add an entirely new language to CKAN or update an existing translation, you have two options.

Transifex setup. Creating or updating translation files using Transifex, the open source translation software. To add a language you need to request it from the Transifex dashboard: https://www.transifex.com/okfn/ckan/dashboard/ Alternatively to update an existing language you need to request to join the appropriate CKAN language team. If you don’t hear back from the CKAN administrators, contact them via the ckan-dev list.

When leading up to a CKAN release, the strings are loaded onto Transifex and ckan-dev list is emailed to encourage translation work. When the release is done, the latest translations on Transifex are checked back into CKAN.

One of the aims of CKAN is to be accessible to the greatest number of users.
Translating the user interface to as many languages as possible plays a huge
part in this, and users are encouraged to contribute to the existing
translations or submit a new one. At the same time we need to ensure the
stability between CKAN releases, so the following guidelines apply when
managing translations:

About 3 weeks before a CKAN release, CKAN is branched, and the English
strings are frozen, and an announcement is made on ckan-dev to call for
translation work. They are given 2 weeks to translate any new strings in this
release.

During this period, translation is done on a ‘resource’ on Transifex which is
named to match the new CKAN version. It has been created as a copy of the
next most recent resource, so any new languages create or other updates done
on Transifex since the last release automatically go into the new release.